Content Creation Improvement Informal User Group/Archive/July 31st, 2012 Meeting

15:04	Geenz Spad	so any issues on the JIRA anyone feels like bringing up?
	Braydon Randt	well .. nothing teachers you the power of a raid array and a backup like a failed drive
15:05	Typhaon Nishi	Hi Siddean :)
	Nal	no JIRA's... Some people were trying to find out what Karl is doing and what the status of Redpoly process is at the Nyx's meeting.
15:07	[noctis.mesh leather wingback chair (13p, 9 pe) whispers [noctis] MESH leather wingback chair (13p, 9 PE) whispers]	(⇞PgUp or ⇟ PgDn ) change your pose. Touch for menu.
	Braydon Randt	well this is a bit light this evening
15:08	Geenz Spad	Build floater improvement discussion (continued from July 17, 2012's meeting) Geenz Spad
15:09		anyone want to discuss this? it's a bit of an important one :p
15:10	Nal	It may be important, but I suspect few people are into interface design...
	Braydon Randt	i concur, and stated my opinions on the usefullness of gradiants in a build floater at out last meeting
15:11	Geenz Spad	well really, UI designers or not, one of the things brought up at the last meeting was what would be good groupings of items on the current floater
15:12		the point of the gradients example was to show how cramped the build floater was getting, and what adding new features will typically entail in terms of adding to that problem
15:13		adding a little bar listing off frequently used colors and gradients is one thing, now imagine adding something like another texture picker on top of that, or even something as small a color picker
	Braydon Randt	but placing more things in the floater ... to suit the individual , then asking for the whole floater to be redisigned, may just add to the complexity , to which 5 out of 100 people wont use , is not the best use of resources, despite it being an inteligent suggestion [15:15] KadahKadah was finally able to make one of these meetings.
15:16	Siddean Munro	I think someone last week suggested a custom toolshelf which I would support but then the floater needs to be modular so bits and pieces could be added to the custom tab
	Geenz Spad	which brings me to the next point: eventually the build floater will need a bit of a redesign, even if it comes in the form of segregating the floater into two modes: Basic, which resembles the classic build floater we saw SL grow up with, and Extended/Advanced, being one that can better accommodate additional parameters, whatever they may be
	Typhaon Nishi	yeah I was susggesting the layout be customizable so that you can move the layout accordin gto the features you most often use
15:17	Geenz Spad	now the question is, how do we go about such a redesign: do we the residents come up with an idea, even if it's a rough one, of what is required to make such a redesign "work" for most people, or do we leave it LL to sort it out
	Siddean Munro	personally I'd prefer not to have the build floater sitting out over my screen realestate, I'd like to dock it to the sidebar :p
	Typhaon Nishi	well maybe you could put it out there which features are the ones people tend to use
	Braydon Randt	again ... i concur with Siddean
	Typhaon Nishi	there could even be layout presets
	Kadah	Accordion? The build floter is using an accordion control(s) now?
	Geenz Spad	ah, looks like things are picking up
	Braydon Randt	to me .. that would be the BIGGEST improvement
15:18	Typhaon Nishi	Hi Crash :)
	Crash Uladstron	hello guys
	Geenz Spad	build floater isn't using accordions to my knowledge Kadah
15:19		welcome to those just joining us; we're picking up on the build floater discussion from last week
	Kadah	I would hope it ever does, that is one of the most screen wasteful control in the viewer.
	Geenz Spad	as always, you can find the agenda here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Content_Creation_Improvement_User_Group feel free to add to it
	Typhaon Nishi	you could do asome kind of survey to see which features of the build menu people tend to use and what they do in SL. For example a builder might tend to use different parts of the menu to a store owner
	Sasy Scarborough	contents and general to be seen at once would make my SLife
15:20	Geenz Spad	we could do that, yeah
	Typhaon Nishi	you could see what features the average resident uses, make that the default layout
15:21	Geenz Spad	could start a few JIRAs I suppose; not unless Oz can get a survey pushed out to the login screen
	Kadah	Surveys are mostly useless, the sample sizes are never anything meaningful.
	Sasy Scarborough	a log in one that you cant log in until you do it :D
	Typhaon Nishi	lol
	Siddean Munro	I'll happily help propagate out a survey through blogs and plurk and whatnot
	Geenz Spad	they tend to do a bit better when people can actually comment on them
		thus the JIRA idea
	Typhaon Nishi	maybe on the SL forum?
		you could gather UI ideas
15:22	Geenz Spad	that could work
	Crash Uladstron	sl forum and blogs plurk etc ,they are dif crowds
	Typhaon Nishi	yeah
	Siddean Munro	I think getting a jira in and then linking that would be good.
	Sasy Scarborough	would example ideas be a good idea ? like a pick your own adventure concept
	Kadah	Additional viewer metrics would be very helpful, but there doesn't exist the framework for such at this time.
15:23	Nal	If you are going to try and get the community involved in designing a new Build Panel, I think you are making it unusually difficult. Find a coupld of creatives that want to help and start experimenting like Niran does.
	Geenz Spad	that would probably be helpful; though now that I think about it, let's go about it like this:
	Typhaon Nishi	could even set up an email, then reach out to SL blog owners/ post on the SL forum and say if you have feature ideas/ design concepts send them to this email
	Kadah	(Plus LL can't even keep their current limited viewer stats system functional.)
	Geenz Spad	first, let's gather feedback about the pro's and con's of the existing build flaoter
15:24	Sasy Scarborough	you cant resize it is a con
	Geenz Spad	a few off the top of my head: localizations more often than not overflow off the side of the floater, things are getting cramped, it'll be hard to add additional features to it..
	Typhaon Nishi	its hard to add on new features con
	Kadah	The XUI layout is too horrid to even think about resize support.
	Geenz Spad	one massive pro I can think of, is the existing floater is simple
15:25	Sasy Scarborough	could it be snappable like the drop downs are, couldnt build be top bar item instead ?
	Geenz Spad	anyone can pick up the existing build UI and figure out how to use it
	Kadah	My biggest issue with it is that its larger (compared to v1) but yet feel far more cramped.
	Geenz Spad	so those are some pros and cons to get things rolling
15:26	Siddean Munro	Con - it is annoying to have it over working space and having to adjust the camera or floater to see/select what's underneath it
	Geenz Spad	after that, we can begin identifying ways to either fix what's already there (as interim fixes), or how to make a whole new floater that can fit the same pros, while offering better functionality
15:27	Typhaon Nishi	ill keep a tab on whats been said pros and cons
	Kadah	It needs utility without taking up a third to half the screen. :p
	Sasy Scarborough	across the top of the screen would be great
		docked
	Geenz Spad	thank you Typhaon, you can also post a forum thread if you like and link it to today's meeting notes once they're up and last week's notes if you wish
15:28		so, docking seems to be something that'd be pretty nice
	Kadah	Across the top would be annoying in widescreen.
	Geenz Spad	maybe make it configurable in where it can be docked?
	Sasy Scarborough	it could only drop down if you want it too but if it was only as thick as nav bar i think that would be great
	Geenz Spad	nice thing I absolutely love about Modo's UI: anything can be docked and undocked to the user's preferences
15:29	Sasy Scarborough	only contents would need to be something that came down
	Kadah	We would need docking support to start with.
	Geenz Spad	this is true
	Kadah	Which its never had.
	Siddean Munro	Yes, I love the way the V3 UI works with the buttons down the side that you can move around. Something like that that appears in build mode would be good
	Geenz Spad	(seeing as how the viewer doesn't support such a concept)
	Sasy Scarborough	agreed
		and the ability to just remove it altogether if you never use build
	Kadah	Let alone allowing advanced docking and dymanic layouts.
15:30	Typhaon Nishi	to solve the cramping, could have expandable menus
	Geenz Spad	could be a good reason to add such support however Kadah, as hellish as working with the viewer's UI already is :p
15:31	Kadah	The viewer's UI code and XUI currently is very very far from supporting dynamic layouts. Its a pipe dream right now :P
	Qie Niangao	Just an observation that most of the General tab contents are on the Object Profile (opens in an Inventory floater) which is most of what's useful to non-creators in the Build floater. (well, that and Contents)
15:32	Geenz Spad	so, my general feeling right now is if we do add a new build UI, or replace the existing one, we should make it configurable
	Siddean Munro	Oh how nice it would be to change contents from inventory
	Kadah	(Not unless someone wants to replace LL's UI with a standard GUI toolkit like QT, GTK, etc :P)
15:33	Typhaon Nishi	one thing about the contents is the refresh time it takes when you place a few things in there at once
	Geenz Spad	I have a couple of ideas of how we could make a configurable UI Kadah, but I doubt it'd fit within the XUI spec :P
	Kadah	The current build floater is ancient code, no one was wanted to touch it too much because its made of fossils and dust.
		s/was/has
	Geenz Spad	that, and it would probably invoke the wrath of many a builder :p
15:34	Siddean Munro	well..wrath until they figure out that it's better than it is now :)
	Kadah	Oz, about 1.5 years ago, challenged me to rewrite it. I wasn't that stupid. :P
15:35	Geenz Spad	well, what would people think of having the old UI around for the sake of something that's easy to use for people who just want to casually pop in, and move their furniture around?
	Sasy Scarborough	i think that would work people dont like change too much
		you have to sneak it in
	Typhaon Nishi	I mean if we're changing just the layout there could be an option to choose the old layout
	Kadah	(The product team also rejected all of my proposals too.)
15:36	Crash Uladstron	I think many will flip out on a changed layout with no option to rever to old,see V2,V3 for reference
	Geenz Spad	makes it less of a rewrite on the backend side of things (what people like Kadah and myself would be doing) and more of an addition with regards to a "new" UI that would, in theory, include whatever advanced features that I totally know nothing about that could come later down the road
	Typhaon Nishi	should be a revert for sure
	Sasy Scarborough	also for those returning after absense
		absence
15:37	Kadah	If the upper 1/4 of the build floater contained the basic "move, view, and name things" abilities, the floater could just be collapsed.
		It mostly does now, but its a mess of "also me" addons over the years.
15:38	Geenz Spad	this way, people who don't want change don't have to deal with change, and it gives the people who will be working on this a bit more creative freedom with regards to making something that increases efficiency, solves most of the problems of the existing one, and adds plenty of room for expansion
	Kadah	Creating completely new workflows kills existing efficiency.
15:39	Sasy Scarborough	while we are making a wish list i would like that if you set the perms on something to be no transfer that if you add items to it that are transfer it yells at you :D
	Geenz Spad	this is where we get into "how can we design it to improve existing efficiency"
15:40	Typhaon Nishi	it was mentioned last week as well about shift selecting multiple inventory items so that you can edit their properties all at once
		I remember alot of people liking that one
	Finlay MacFanatic	I liked it...
	Sasy Scarborough	is that on the ground or in inventory , because if you swap perms in inventory you risk the perms bug
	Geenz Spad	that's more of an inventory UX thing, kinda makes me wonder what happened to the simple inventory project
15:41	Kadah	And doing drastic redesigns is hard/impossible without the inherent risk of alienating some portion of old users.
	Geenz Spad	doing any kind of redesign has that risk, but in this case it's something that'll have to happen sooner or later
15:42		because right now what we have, despite getting everyone by over the years and still being as functional as ever, is showing its age
	Kadah	And one thing that does need to be address is the huge technical issues with any actions involving an objects contents.
	Crash Uladstron	I doubt anyone actually up and left because of new things ,they will cry a bit and then they'll adapt
	Kadah	^ Actually, they do.
	Geenz Spad	so anyways, one thing Oz mentioned last time that I'd like to see myself:
15:43		what would be useful groupings of existing functionality for this "new" build interface
	Braydon Randt	whioch i read as .. " let snot make it better ..... let sjust group it together , so change for no improvement"
15:44	Kadah	(I have the numbers showing how non existent the adoption of v2/3 has been in the years since shortly after release. But this is a different matter.)
	Geenz Spad	and just to touch on Beanster's final agenda item before we run out of time today: no clue, but I imagine Qarl will say something on metareality when there's an update
15:45		and Braydon, if that's how you read it, then be my guest to propose an idea as to how we can improve the current state of affairs
15:46	Kadah	It seems to have stalled again, its jira should have an indication of what the status is
15:47	Siddean Munro	it hasn't been updated for some time, not by Qarl or any Lindens at least. Nalates ran a poll on her blog last week asking if people still want the deformer first and the result was a loud yes I believe!
	Braydon Randt	the reality of the situation .. is that we have camps of " its not broke lets not change it" ...... to " lets throw everything in a pot .. so we can choose what we want dispite it looking cramped and unusuable" ... to my camp , which is " lets keep it as simple as possible , make it dockable, and be able make people build " does anybody here use old blender ... 2.49 , people would open it ..... then close it again in terror
		THAT ... is what loading a UI with crap .... does to the average person
15:48		it inhibits them
	Sasy Scarborough	laughs because i did exactly that
		the big UI change in Blender was like a revolving door
	Siddean Munro	well... I think the V3 UI is hugely improved on the old SL UI. I open phoenix now and close it in terror because I don't know where anything is
15:49	Tiberious Neruda	I use old Blender
	Kadah	Just remember that "simple" in designspeak means less options and functionality.
	Siddean Munro	But there's still room for improvement
	Braydon Randt	but ...... do we want to elitist
		or want SL to be more " useable"
	Sasy Scarborough	builders and content creators should aim for that :)
	Finlay MacFanatic	I just want to stop making things nine times.. and things still not fitting
15:50	Geenz Spad	also, I'm just gonna put this over here for now~
	Braydon Randt	remember ... cload party ... as increased " user useablity " ... max wants us to have something resembling a GUI for an amiga ... in a 3 by 5 box
	Kadah	Be careful around LL when you say "something needs to be simpler", there normal modus operandi is "options are bad".
	maisy	maybe a builders viewer might be a simpler option
15:51	Sasy Scarborough	an option at log in ?
	Braydon Randt	remember ... i want lots of options ...... but i dont want everything on screen at the same time ... or my Sl wondow ... will be a 2 x 2 bow .. surrounded with other boxes
	Sasy Scarborough	like basic vs advanced
	Typhaon Nishi	A builder UI mode
		or preset
	maisy	exactly
	Braydon Randt	sorry spelling caused by incompetance
	Kadah	The login option thing was called a failure some time ago and killed.
15:52	Sasy Scarborough	so builders mode would be more advanced and regular SL would have the building tools it has now
	Typhaon Nishi	it would be cool to customize it and make your own presets, I dont know how realistic of a suggestion that is
	Sasy Scarborough	so you dont have to relog just to move a chair
	Braydon Randt	i would get all mushy .... at an SL builder viewer ...... rather than a " your all stupid .. so we makey da UI like facebook" interface
	Siddean Munro	why not put the advanced mode under a button like it is in graphics preferences? You don't have to have all that stuff visible if you don't want to
		Or the way it is under the snapshot option?
	Typhaon Nishi	yeah
	Braydon Randt	that works for me Siddean
15:53	Geenz Spad	well, I doubt we'll ever see a builder's specific viewer distributed by LL :P
	Sasy Scarborough	good idea Siddean
	Geenz Spad	but a builder's mode that can be toggled sounds interesting
	Siddean Munro	I hated logging into SL to find I was in "noob mode" and having to log out to get the "advanced" regular mode
	Braydon Randt	im looking at this from a realistic point of view , and its not a negative one , unless its a TPV done thing , the chances are virtually non existant on ANY "improvement"
	Kadah	LL will likely ever support two different UI schemes again, they decided that it had no positive affect to offer such. :p
15:54		s/ever/never
	Geenz Spad	well, imagine this, and just an FYI I'm not confirming anything here, nor should any of you count this as "news" on the matter:
	Braydon Randt	so the best we can hope for ...... is so rearranging of whats there
15:55		if thats the case ... i vote for an advanced menu .... and docking
	Geenz Spad	say at some undefined point in time, LL adds the long awaited ability to add a custom bumpmap to a surface
		now, naturally you'll want a texture picker for that, yes
		?*
15:56		so how would they add that to the existing UI?
	maisy	could you not just have your regular build controls and say .. press a button like you do to get the advanced menu up to take you into some dort of advanced building mode
	Geenz Spad	the texture tab is already really cramped, probably the best example thus far
	Braydon Randt	by adding a " materials" floater .... as they SHOULD
	Kadah	What may be more pratical is a basic and everything mode for the build floater, possible similar to the legacy more/less it used to have.
	Tiberious Neruda	I could get behind that
15:57	Geenz Spad	that's an option as well
	Kadah	Just adding more/less functionality would be easy (and in fact is already done).
	Braydon Randt	its an option , thats dependant on wether or not LL gets behind making SL a realistic 3d enviroment , or just pushing pathfinder projects .. or rejects from the LL Worlds projects .. into the SL system
	Tiberious Neruda	especially if it offered custom shininess textures
15:58	Braydon Randt	but as i said , very much dependent ..... on wether LL intend to spend any time and money on that project
	Geenz Spad	I'm pretty sure we'll see something regarding materials soon
		and trust me on this; I would know
15:59	Siddean Munro	^
	Crash Uladstron	that's great news
	Kadah	Another problem is that 3D editing tools, in general, are not as "straight forward" as something like a 2D paint application.
	Braydon Randt	i would hope so , but this isnt about materials , its about the useablity for the User , and LL have simplified things significantly , yet .... hiding stuff under the real estate carpet " just makes it harder for people
16:00	Geenz Spad	another good point Kadah
	Kadah	So there may be no real "noob friendly" option. :P
	Geenz Spad	so, how does everyone feel about the idea of a basic and advanced mode for the current floater?
	Kadah	But there is a big different between paint.exe and PS
	Sasy Scarborough	for
	Finlay MacFanatic	I'd like that
	Siddean Munro	I like it
	Typhaon Nishi	yeah I like it
16:01	Finlay MacFanatic	... but I liked Dolphin too
	Braydon Randt	im no noob , by any shake of the foxes tail , but im playing devils advocate here , LL want user retention , and we allready have the " mesh neghsayers" claiming the wolds against them etc ..... but hey , im just against the " maxwell graff" PS in a box mentality , in favor of the " lets make it workable ...... " first
	Typhaon Nishi	I think there has to be more of a consensus though
16:02		the community have to be happy with it before diving right in
	Finlay MacFanatic	if they had stuff that fit and made them sexy again.. I'm sure they'd love mesh
16:03	Braydon Randt	im afraid mesh cant fix uglyness
	Geenz Spad	I agree Typhaon, which of course is supposed the be one of the intended purposes of this group; getting a consensus on features and functionality that would generally be beneficial to content creation as a whole on SL
	Finlay MacFanatic	I keep trying to take you hair shopping
	Kadah	You could have 3 modes. 1) a basic new floater for moving objects with some other basic functions like naming. 2) a shorten version of the current build floater. 3) then the full, expanded build floater.
16:04	Braydon Randt	how about ....... they sort the mesh floater ..... and add the sexy stuff to that
		and leave the normal build floater to the people who want sex and free lindens ... so they can resize their free penis
	Finlay MacFanatic	you'd be better off with two Kadah.. no one orders the medium drink.. its small or bladder buster
16:05	Sasy Scarborough	or how about the basic for people that just want to be able to move things around or for CSR's etc that need to check perms and so on, name vendors , rename items in contents etc
	Geenz Spad	hm
		whelp, I will say this
		I think we've found a new topic to keep these meetings as active as ever since morph targets moved into proposal mode :P
	Kadah	As far as retentions, I think the only retention problem they have and continue to have, without any change despite many efforts to, is with new users. User retion on TPVs has been in positive growth for a long time, but LL's viewer has been relatively flat.
16:06		The modes 2 and 3 would just the the same UI but compacted, the primary use there would be less screen space when needed.
16:07	Geenz Spad	well, on that note I have homework for all of you! And don't worry, it doesn't require any special UI design skills :P
	Tiberious Neruda	that's because the TPVs offer stuff that LL's client doesn't
	Kadah	2 and 3 we could implement today, its already exists.
	Braydon Randt	yes like temp textures
	Geenz Spad	so we have this rather large topic about the build floater, now of this topic there are plenty of possible directions it can go
	Kadah	Temp or local textures?
16:08	Siddean Munro	we already have local textures in V3
	Braydon Randt	both are a bennefit to me , as generally .. beta grid is crappy at the best of times
	Geenz Spad	so what I'd like people to do, is get the word about about the build UI discussion; who knows! we may get someone who knows how to design a UI on board!
	Kadah	Temp textures is a misuse abuse that emerald started. :/
	Finlay MacFanatic	the beta grid hates me
16:09	Braydon Randt	its a misuse ..... that is exceptionally usefull that works
	Tiberious Neruda	one thing we can do with it is actually SHOW it to other people
	Braydon Randt	before that ... sdpending 100L on testing .. was abuse *lol* [16:09] KadahKadah already designs UIs now though :P
	Geenz Spad	so let's get word out about a build floater UI rework; maybe not entirely a redesign, maybe it could be a whole new mode as someone mentioned, maybe it could be an extension of the existing floater, etc.
	Tiberious Neruda	critical functionality you CAN'T do with the 'local library'
	Sasy Scarborough	http://www.flickr.com/photos/61900109@N02/7070702407/in/photostream I would love build tools like how William Weaver did this plug in for windlight, amazing work - sorry it took me that long to find it
16:10	Geenz Spad	but regardless, we need input, we need criticism, we need ideas for something like this from people in the builder's camp
	Tiberious Neruda	and if I'm doing a skin for someone, I want them to see it and approve it
16:11	Geenz Spad	now Typhaon I believe will be taking care of a forum thread for us, so let's try to organize there if we can
		Kadah, I'm assuming you'd be willing to take on some of the design responsibilities for this one?
16:12	Kadah	I likely would have been already. If the design is anything I can agree with, I more than likely will (time permitting).
16:13	Typhaon Nishi	ive got a notecard that I'll try and mush together best I can
	Geenz Spad	do bear in mind that you'll be working around people's criticisms on the matter, but being a TPV dev I'm sure you're fairly thick skinned already and know how to take that :p
	Nal	IS anyone talking to the folks at Builders Brewry?
	Kadah	Currently I can't stand LL's viewer, or FS, or any thing else based off V2/3, so I'll need to do something just to make something suitable for myself.
16:14	Geenz Spad	I had asked one of the owners of BB in an offline IM, but never got anything back; would be beneficial to the cause if someone were to inform them of these little get togethers we have
16:15	Kadah	(Nor Singularity, but thats because they managed to imported an accessibility issue from v2/3 thats a blocker for me.)
	Tiberious Neruda	I have only one or two gripes about FS....
	Geenz Spad	I have several, but that's not quite relevant to this meeting :p
16:16	Tiberious Neruda	well, one of them -is-
	Geenz Spad	so anyways, in closing
	Tiberious Neruda	it doesn't render shiny invisiprims
	Geenz Spad	(since we're at our time limit)
		build UI - lets get more feedback and try to get something going with improving it while keeping existing users happy
16:17	Finlay MacFanatic	a button that hides it from them should keep them happy enough...
	Tiberious Neruda	is there some place there's a mock-up of what you'd be looking to do?
	Geenz Spad	Qarl's deformer - no idea what the deal is with this; there's probably a hold up on either LL or Qarl's end
		Tiberious: currently we're kind of in a bit of an information gathering stage
	Tiberious Neruda	oh
16:18	Geenz Spad	can't put together a concept without ideas and feedback on those ideas
	Kadah	Mesh deformer, probably stuck in an LL pipe clogged with meeroo glue.
16:19	Geenz Spad	and also, an update on morph targets (and interestingly enough, why they're no longer on the agenda) - this is now in proposal mode, and you can actually find what's currently on the proposal here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Morph_Target_Community_Proposal
		you can comment on it in the discussion section of the wiki, whether it's technical details, user facing details, or what have you
16:20		all feedback will be taken into consideration with regards to the proposal, and once it's in a state of completion it'll be forwarded to the appropriate lindens for review, and with permission a prototype will be made and presented to them
16:21		anyways, that concludes today's meeting, thanks everyone for coming out!